The next Artist You Need To Know is Terry Graff.
Many are familiar with Graff’s work as a curator and cultural worker, but he is also a prolific artist whose works occupy the same space as (a previously featured Artist You Need To Know) John Scott in being both evocative and unsettling, creating artworks that are both engaging yet also offer a playful edge of horror to them.
Graff is a multi-media visual artist whose “mutant duck and bird machines or avian cyborgs [are] a distinctive vision in Canadian art that speaks to the conflicted relationship between nature and technology and to daringly dark existential themes, such as ecological collapse, a deadly pandemic, and the grim horrors of war. Comprising a blend of sci-fi fantasy, black humour, and apocalyptic angst, his mixed-media drawings, paintings, collages, assemblages, sculptures, kinetic works, and multi-media installations have been presented regionally, nationally, and internationally to both critical and popular acclaim.” (from his site)
Graff was born in 1954, in Cambridge (formerly known as Galt), Ontario, Canada. From an early age he was creating artworks and producing a number of works. He attended Fanshawe College in London when he was 18 : London had a vibrant art scene at that time (one of Graff’s instructors was previously featured Artist You Need To Know Don Bonham) and Graff also visited New York City to expand his influences. While still a student at Fanshaw, Graff began exhibiting in group shows with his work already receiving critical acclaim.
He would study painting at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht and subsequently travel around Europe, absorbing more art and ideas from the many museums and galleries he visited. Returning to Canada, Graff earned a B.A. in Fine Art from the University of Guelph, and a B.Ed. in Visual Arts from the University of Western Ontario : he also took a number of classes at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Graff would also impressively obtain a postgraduate diploma in Fine Art (M.F.A. equivalent) from the Jan Van Eyck Academie and a M.A. in Art Education from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
For the last several years, Graff has been touring a massive exhibition (that, if we may make a bit of a joke that I think the artist would tolerate, is in many ways a swan song in terms of his voluminous practice) titled Avian Cyborgs.
An excerpt from Graff’s very erudite statement about this show, and his other overlapping series that focus upon birds : “I first started making sculptural assemblages of ducks fused with machine parts and scrap materials in the early 1970s. I thought of them as visual expressions of the process of becoming modified or transformed for survival in an ever-evolving technological world fraught with environmental peril. After the first prototypes, the avian cyborg became a persistent motif in my work, and evolved into my primary vehicle for expressing the conflictive relationship between nature and technology and what it feels like to live in a time of crisis, of prevailing fears and anxieties brought on by real-life perils unfolding on the planet — climate change and ecological catastrophes, the trauma and brutal carnage of war, and more recently the COVID-19 pandemic.”
We’re sharing a number of installation shots of this project below, but the Woodstock Art Gallery has two videos about the show online. One where Graff talks about his art and ideas is here, and a quick tour of the show is here. If you’re interested to delve deeper into these works – and have a more thorough explanation of them, that intersects with an overview of Graff’s larger practice – there’s a longer video from the Art Gallery of Sudbury here for you to enjoy.
This show was on view at the Cape Breton University Art Gallery (Sydney, NS), the Art Gallery of Sudbury (Sudbury, ON), the Woodstock Art Gallery, (Woodstock, ON) and the UNB Art Centre (Fredericton, NB).
Much more about these lovely and uncanny works can be seen here.
The words of Mary Reid, director / curator of the Woodstock Art Gallery : “Like many birds, Graff is an avid scavenger, always on the lookout for interesting bits and objects to bring back to his studio for future inspiration and contemplation. . . . Many of the elements that he incorporates [in his assemblages] are fossils from older forms of technology, which allude to the concept of lost knowledge.”
Graff’s artworks are in many public and private collections, including the Canada Council Art Bank, the Province of New Brunswick Art Bank, the City of Cambridge, Galerie d’art Louise-et-Reuben-Cohen, and the Crown Collection of the Official Residences of Canada (The Canadiana Fund).
It would be remiss to not mention Graff’s significant accomplishments as an art educator, art writer, curator, and gallery director. Graff has been the director of four significant public art galleries across Canada : these are the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (NB), the Mendel Art Gallery (SK), Rodman Hall Arts Centre (ON), and Confederation Centre Art Gallery (PEI). He was also the director of the artist-run space Struts Gallery in Sackville (NB).
Graff has curated over 200 exhibitions over his career, and is also a respected arts writer and editor : he has also taught in a variety of spaces from high school students to universities. A more in depth listing of these achievements can be seen here.
“I don’t ever recall making a conscious decision to be an artist. Art has been my calling and all-consuming passion as far back as I can remember.”
Graff is a member of the Remix Collective : “a creative group of contemporary artists from different parts of Canada who make sophisticated, socially conscious art outside the mainstream.” He lives in Island View, New Brunswick.
Much more about Terry Graff’s art and his career – and many more images of his evocative art works – can be enjoyed here.